


Death By Bad Design

by thephilosophersapprentice



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Asexual Character, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Justice Memes Verse, costume critique, irreverent mentions of boobs, mild inappropriate humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 07:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13383072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thephilosophersapprentice/pseuds/thephilosophersapprentice
Summary: Tim Drake is cleaning out his files on various nemeses he's faced. Harley comes in. They have a talk about proper costume choices and former adversaries. Set in the Justice Memes verse.





	Death By Bad Design

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrincessaKyla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessaKyla/gifts).



> The Justice Memes verse started on Tumblr as the DC side of the Memevengers, which was sparked off by buckykingofmemes. It features not-so-evil villains and former villains, way too many co-parents, and lots of mockery about bad costume choices. You can find Harley at harleymeme-quinn and Tim at timeme-drake on Tumblr.  
> From a conversation with PrincessaKyla.

Tim scrolled through the files on the computer suite he’d set up for his own use in the Batcave. While the Batcomputer worked well, Tim had slightly different preferences about settings and capabilities—just enough to make the Batcomputer frustrating and continuously slightly inconvenient to use.

He scrolled through his old files, checking down old adversaries he’d seen in Gotham, noting who could be placed lower and who should be placed higher on the threat list. He edged Bane up a few places, moving him above Riddler and the former Rogues now employed by Penguin at the Iceberg Lounge. Tim wasn’t sure how much he’d be able to trust some of them, given how a few had scarred him up in the universe he came from, but he was trying.

Bane. He’d never quite understood Bane’s motivations and back in the Robin days, just disliking Bane because he’d broken Bruce’s back might have been enough, but now, not understanding on an intuitive level why Bane did anything made Tim uncomfortable. It was the same as when he’d first met Talia Al Ghul, her uncertain loyalties an inconstant and shaky ground. The one constant with Talia was that, while her loyalty to Bruce warred with her loyalty to her father, her love of Damian overrode both, and Tim could respect that. For him, family was something more than just blood, but he understood loyalty to family.

Tim updated Bane’s file with a tentative link-back to King Snake (should probably keep an eye out for Dorrance too) and moved Talia’s file to the allies category, adding her Black Mamba identity.

The next set of files were on the Council of Spiders. Tim hesitated for a long moment before he opened the first one. Goliath, Recluse, Wolf, Funnel, Tangle—seven to one, and they had been easy to overcome. Sac freaked Tim out on some fundamental level—probably something to do with the knee-jerk reaction to spiders hardwired into the human genome. Either that or the fact that Sac’s powers were just nasty. Widower had cost Tim his spleen. And Wanderer… something about her, much as Tim would like to deny it, _intrigued_ him.

He stared at the open file. Born in Brazil, as far as they could uncover; she was in her late twenties, from what they could tell. Real name Vittoria; they hadn’t been able to discover her last name. The Brazilian wandering spider—from which she likely derived her name and possibly her powers—was one of the most lethal in the world. Tim wondered who she had been—who she would have been, if she hadn’t developed powers that killed anyone she touched. What would that do to someone—to never be able to touch another human being without killing them? When he’d met the Wanderer, as far as he could tell she was a sociopath, but she hadn’t seemed insane.

Lost in thought, Tim didn’t notice Harley had entered the Batcave until she squeezed his shoulder, leaning over the back of his chair. “Who’s this?” Harley asked. Tim self-consciously straightened.

“She goes by the Wanderer. She nearly killed me in the dimension I came from—it was memorable because she killed one of Ra’s Al Ghul’s body doubles two minutes before that.”

“She’s definitely good-looking,” Harley commented. Tim huffed.

“Her outfit’s impractical. I mean, I get that she needs direct skin-on-skin contact for her powers to work, but bare arms and legs would be more than enough.”

“Maybe she tries to lure in victims to touch her boobs,” Harley suggested. Tim stared up at Harley, his mouth falling open. Harley grinned at him. “I mean. I would. If I got permission. If I died, it would be so worth it.”

“And clearly I’m too asexual for this conversation,” Tim muttered. Harley laughed.


End file.
